One of the things that becomes clear in relational therapy is how intelligent our defences are. Intellectualising, the tendency to analyse, explain, and think our way through experiences rather than feel them, isn’t a failure of emotional awareness. It’s a sign that somewhere along the line, staying in the head felt considerably safer than dropping into the body and its…
Have you found yourself defending someone who treated you badly, or feeling loyal to a person whose care was unreliable at best and harmful at worst? That experience is more common than most people realise, and it has a name: trauma bonding. Trauma bonding develops when harm and connection become entangled in the same relationship. It’s most visible in abusive…
A stiff neck, a clamped jaw, a hollow ache in the chest that has no obvious cause. Most of us have learned to explain these away as bad posture or getting older. Sometimes that’s accurate. Sometimes the body is holding something the mind hasn’t found words for yet. People who come to therapy often say something like: “It wasn’t that bad.…
There’s a particular frustration that comes from trying to explain how you feel and coming up blank. Your mouth and your mind seem to be working from different scripts. For people living with the effects of complex trauma, especially those who dissociate, that’s not a loose description. It’s biology. When the nervous system is under threat, the body’s primary aim…
Not everyone finds it easy to talk. For some, sitting face-to-face and trying to explain the inner world means words vanish before they arrive, sentences falter, and the thing you most need to say stays just out of reach. Something different can happen when a pen hits the page. Therapeutic writing offers a space where words can land quietly, without…
People come to therapy for many different reasons, and most of them aren’t in crisis. Some arrive knowing exactly what they want to work on. Others have a vaguer sense that something isn’t quite right, that they keep arriving at the same difficulties, or that they’re functioning well but not fully. Both are valid starting points. The list below covers…
Grief is a natural response to loss, but when it feels unending, overwhelming, or tangled with emotions that don’t seem to belong to ordinary mourning, it may be what’s known as complicated grief. This form of bereavement can feel isolating, particularly when the people around you expect you to have moved on. If you’re carrying a loss that doesn’t seem…
Therapy is not a quick fix or a passive cure. It requires active effort and commitment from the client. When you’re struggling, it’s tempting to hope therapy will sort things out the way a prescription does. You show up, someone applies their expertise, and you leave fixed. That’s not what therapy is, and understanding the difference matters before you start.…
Writing for Wellbeing: Therapeutic Writing to Process Trauma Experiencing trauma, whether a single overwhelming event such as an accident, assault, medical emergency, or sudden loss, or the more cumulative effects of difficult childhood experiences, can leave you feeling stuck, fragmented, or disconnected from yourself. Talking therapies can be invaluable, and therapeutic writing offers something alongside or between those conversations: a…
What Supervision Is Actually For: A Relational Perspective Clinical supervision is more than a professional requirement. It’s the space where the relational dimensions of your clinical work become visible, where what you carry out of the therapy room can be examined, understood, and used. From a psychodynamic and relational perspective, supervision is itself a relational process, shaped by the same…